For all of July Ella is in summer school and I am so glad we signed her up. I am quite pleased with the work the class has completed and know that it has helped Ella solidify her basic skills. Her summer teacher sent me an email mid-month and said, "Ella is an amazing girl, and I am very impressed with what she has accomplished in the short time she has been in this country. I know that she has come a long way, thanks to her parents and to her teachers, Mrs. H. and Mrs. O." And Ella's summer bus driver told me, "I just love her. She's such a fresh ray of sunshine." Ella also had a follow-up with our IA Clinic and the written report we received from the team there afterward described her language acquisition as "remarkable" and noted that she "speaks English fluently."
We are still doing academic work at home as well. Sight words continue to be a focus and Ella is up to recognizing over 60 now, nearly a third of the Dolch words she is supposed to acquire by the end of third grade. We have also been working on counting to 100 and on recognizing/naming money and understanding its value. Ella will begin receiving an allowance when she turns seven, so we knew this was an area we had to address now.
Physically, Ella is doing well. She has gained height (+3 cm), but no weight, so that's being monitored. She is very active and loves to ride her bike with training wheels, despite the challenge this presents for her, and swim in the pool. She had a check-up with her orthopedist and continues to have no restrictions from movement or weight bearing. As we expected, she is not a candidate for orthopedic surgery and the doctor actually believes that surgery would do more harm than good. He predicts that Ella will have nearly full, life-long mobility and that her body will naturally accommodate for the limb differences, as it has been for the past seven years. Her estimated adult height is 130 cm. We also asked for a referral to a hand surgeon to see if Ella's mobility and function in her non-dominant hand can be improved further, so we shall see.
Our biggest issue with Ella continues to be obedience. She does not disobey on any major matters whatsoever, but continues to have trouble with the small daily things. For example, we usually have to tell her multiple times to pick up her clothes or to turn down the volume on her Kindle. I know it's so minor, but we realize that her obedience in these small respects is the precursor to her obedience with bigger issues in the future. So, we repeatedly stress the importance of obedience as a vehicle to learning and being safe and to impose consequences for what we call bad listening skills with Ella's least favorite being going to bed early when her sibs get to still stay up. We tell her that her brain must be too tired to listen and follow instructions and an early bedtime is necessary to help her brain rest and think.
Another area of focus is pressure grading for physical touch. Ella can be a little rough in that department, so we are doing some easy sensory/OT activities at home to give her a better feel for her own body in relation to others. I certainly love the affection from my little girl and she loves to give it, but I would be happy if this wasn't accompanied by as many unintentional ouchies for the recipients.
We continue to have frequent contact with Ella's birth family in Armenia. I believe this has been a very positive experience for Ella. She understands more and more of her story and owns it with confidence. When classmates at school asked her this month where she got her necklace, she told them it was a gift from her birth mother and then, as her teacher told me, explained that a birth mother is "the mom where I was in her tummy before I was born."
All in all, Ella is doing super duper, as she likes to say, and we are so lucky to have her in our family.
A house full of rock stars! Awesome!
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